Archive for the ‘Auburn Cabin Speedster’ tag

Though it’s been getting plenty of media coverage, the sinkhole under the National Corvette Museum that damaged eight cars last month isn’t anywhere close to the worst single automotive disaster in history, not when hundreds of show cars went up in flames 85 years ago today at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Unlike today’s auto shows held in permanent structures, the 1929 Los Angeles Auto Show took place in a group of four tents set up on the southeast corner of Washington Boulevard and Hill Street, on what appeared to be an empty lot at the time, with a renaissance fair-looking entrance facing the boulevard. Also unlike today’s auto shows, the 1929 Los Angeles Auto Show included displays from aviation companies, one of which was Monocoupe builder Mono Aircraft of Moline, Illinois, which a year prior had moved from Davenport, Iowa, when it became a subsidiary of Velie Motors. We know this because the Los Angeles Times reported that it was near the Monocoupe display that the fire began on the afternoon of March 5.

What exactly caused the fire was the source of some confusion. Initial reports blamed an errant cigarette, while followups attributed it to an electrical short. Whatever the cause, the fire spread quickly, aided by the wind (and, as reported, by the fuel in the tanks of the vehicles in the show), though not so quick as to prevent the 2,500 or so spectators in the tents to escape. Nobody was killed, and only three people – two of them firefighters – were injured.

The tents and their contents, however, were a total loss, as illustrated by these photos from the USC Libraries. Many of the burned-out vehicles were dragged next door to A-1 Auto Works after the fire was put out. Estimates of the damage range from about $1 million to $1.25 million (in today’s dollars, about $25.1 million to $31.4 million). As many as 320 cars were destroyed, among them Auburn’s one-off cabin speedster, a two-passenger bicycle-fendered boattail coupe that had previously garnered praise at that year’s New York Automobile Show.

Despite the destruction, the show did go on. A smaller version was reportedly up and running a day later at the Shrine Auditorium.